Monday, May 16, 2016

They start terrorizing us at a
young age. At any given time, Israel typically holds hundreds of Palestinian
children in administrative detention, where they are interrogated and tortured
without charge, without trial, without their parents, without a lawyer, without
an advocate. They’re often kidnapped on their way to and from school, playing
in the streets and throwing rocks at tanks, as they have a right to do, or
pulled from their beds and dragged away in the middle of the night. They’re
shot and murdered or maimed wherever they stand.[1]

And to Rabbi Joseph Berman, Government Affairs Liaison for
Jewish Voice for Peace who says:

Almost half of the 5 million
Palestinian people living under military occupation are children. These young
people who should be free to play, learn, develop, and grow, must live with the
constant fear of home demolitions, physical violence and even imprisonment at
the hands of Israeli forces… Every year, hundreds of Palestinian children are being
arrested, held in inhumane conditions, and denied their rights of due process
by Israeli military kangaroo courts. Every year, 75% of those children suffer
documented abuse or mistreatment at the hands of Israeli forces. And Israel
just brought back “administrative
detention” for children, allowing the IDF to lock up children indefinitely,
without even bringing a charge.

440 Palestinian children, some as young as 12, are locked
up in Israeli military prisons. Pulled from their beds and dragged away in the
middle of the night

I can only imagine the pain felt by children watching their
parents being abused by Israeli kids in uniforms carrying guns. In their young
life they have lived not only with the theft of their homes and water but also
their history and dignity. Their parents have no way of protecting them and
they know it.

However, with all the injustice, suffering and humiliation
inflicted upon Palestinian children, what Israel is doing to its own children
is child abuse at its worse.

Israel teaches every day by its rhetoric and actions that
because they are Jewish, somehow they are superior to other children, that it’s
OK to rob and kill other human beings because Jewish kids are “God chosen
people.” Even if the children of Israel
do not as yet know what is being done in the name of their Jewishness, they
will someday learn. Perhaps then, they will be embarrassed, or worse. They
might buy into their role of living above the rules of civilization.

The pain will come when they grow up to live in a world that
will not see them as superior, but simply as arrogant. When that happens,
Jewish children will have one of three choices; Live in isolation, which in the
modern world is getting harder and harder to do. Or accept the fact that they
have been terribly abused as children by their own people and government. Or put
on blinders and blame their loneliness on anti-Semitism. Regardless, they will have been assigned to a
life of isolation and loneliness.

I call this the worst form of child abuse. I cannot imagine
anything that would infuriate me more
than to have someone come along and tell my children that they do not
have to live by the same rules of courtesy and justice as everyone else because
they are exceptional. I cannot imagine
anything that would guarantee more unhappiness. Not only would they be
miserable, they would spread their misery to anyone who loves them.

Golda Meir said, “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our
children, but we can never forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.” Well, I have news for her. It was not the
“Arabs” who turned her children into killers. It was their own Jewish
superiority culture. Israel’s attitude that Jews are superior human beings and
all who are not Jews are less deserving simply because they are not Jews. I
find myself asking, what are the parents of these children thinking. Then I
remember, they were abused in exactly the same way when they were
children.

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Michael Oren, Israeli
Ambassador to the U.S. said on CNN, “We
have thousands of rockets raining down on our citizens.” In fact, we hear over and over again, “rockets are raining” down on Israel. It makes a strong impression.

Advertisers will tell you that the essence of propaganda is
repetition. So, we hear on FOX News, repeated
reports of “rockets raining” down on Israel. It is such an important image that Israel will
do anything to keep it alive, even when rockets stop. In the summer of 2008,
Palestinian sources reported 8 rockets in June, 12 in July, 11 in August, 4 in
September and 2 in October. An Israeli
Intelligence Report issued by the Israeli government to international journalists
states, “Hamas was careful to maintain
the ceasefire.” There were no deaths by rockets because there were no rockets.[1]

Not the image of “rockets raining” that Israel wants. An average of four drops per month hardly
qualifies as a rain. When I look out on
my front drive and see four drops, I hardly expect to read in the paper that we
had a rainy day. If there are not enough
drops to wet the street or water my hedges, I don’t expect my neighbor to say,
“Wow! What a rainy day.”

Back in 2008, Israel had a dilemma. How to maintain the
victim image of rockets raining down on innocent women and children when there
are no rockets? After six month of rocket absence, on November 4thIsrael
invaded Gaza and killed six Palestinians. Did you get that date? November 4th
was election night in the US when Barack Obama was elected president. Israel
planned its invasion precisely at a time when it was almost guaranteed no one
in America was watching news from Israel. We were all saturated in the counting
of votes so significant to our own lives. When Gaza responded by firing rockets, Israel screamed of
being attacked and was defending itself.

Israel bombarded Gaza with 600 tons of
rockets, killing over 1400 Palestinians. Americans expressed shock. Israeli
spokespersons simply asked, what would you do if rockets were raining down on
your family?

So, what would you
do? Maybe ask what made Palestinians with no power, so desperate that they
fired a few weak, unguided missiles into Israel. Could it be that it’s the only way to remind
the world that they are still suffering oppression under a
brutal occupation?

Thomas Are

May 10, 2016

[1]
These statistics and quotes are lifted from the Media Education Foundation
documentary, The Occupation of the
American Mind, 2016.

Thomas L. Are

I preached for forty three years in the Presbyterian Church before retiring. If anyone would ever refer to me as a Liberation Theologian, I would be pleased. I started blogging several years ago to express my political and religious concern for justice, especially justice for the Palestinians.